All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!

Category Archives: My Free Time


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Did I Seriously Say That?

I am horrified.

Today, while going through the drive through (Matthew was sleeping in the back seat and B suggested we go.  When he suggests fast food, I take him up on it before he takes it back!), I actually thanked the kid who brought our food to the car by saying, “Thanks, dude.”  Before I was even finished with those two words, my mind was asking, ‘what did you just say?’  I physically hunkered a bit and instantly turned to B and said, “I just said, ‘dude.’  I am horrified.”  I was (and still am) so embarrassed.  I told B that the kid probably went in and told his buddies that some thirty-something year old woman just called him, “dude.”  I then corrected myself and said, “he probably said some forty-something year old woman.”  B’s response?  “No, forty-year old women don’t wear baseball caps.”

Does that mean I can’t wear my baseball caps in 4 years?

I am vowing to never call anyone, “dude” again… unless it’s Matthew, of course.


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My Community

I have a very close friend – my closest friend, actually – who also did IVF to get her daughter.  We were friends prior to IVF, but not good friends.  When we both started struggling with conceiving, we got to know each other better and became each others’ support systems.  We didn’t read blogs back then – we didn’t know about them!  We knew about each other and we became each others’ rocks.

We had similar, but different, experiences with IVF.  She was older than me and her first cycle resulted in just a few embryos and a chemical pregnancy.  Heartbreaking.  My first cycle, a short month after hers, resulted in 9 embryos – 2 which were transferred and 7 which were frozen, and a total and complete BFN.  Heartbreaking.  Her second cycle was cancelled before retrieval.  Heartbreaking.  My second cycle (the FET) resulted in low betas and an empty sac.  Heartbreaking.  Her third cycle resulted in 3 embryos – all which were transferred – and her daughter.  JOY!  Her beta was 566.  My third cycle, four months later, resulted in 2 more frozen embryos (back up to 7!) and my beautiful son.  JOY!  My beta was… 566!

My friend moved on to TTC #2 when her daughter was just 8 months old.  She’s turning 40 this year and really wants to finish her family building  now.  Her cycle was identical to my first cycle: 16 eggs retrieved, 9 great embryos, 2 PERFECT transferred embryos, 7 high quality frozen embryos, and… a total and complete BFN.  UGH!  As she was going through the cycle and it was a mirror image of my first cycle, I kept scolding myself for worrying that her cycle would end just like mine.  Why think that way?  But it did – it ended in one very disappointing BFN.

She did her FET today.  I spoke with her this morning and we talked about thaw rates, etc. and she asked how our thaw went with our FET 2 years ago.  We had a 100% thaw rate and we talked about our clinic’s latest thaw rates of 90%.  We were positive.  We were excited!  She texted me later, just before noon, saying that she didn’t know much but that they were up to thawing 4 embryos but not sure if it would work and may need to thaw more.  I called her, we talked about it being likely that all would be fine and she’d have her 3 remaining frozen embryos for “insurance” in case this cycle didn’t work.  We were positive.  We were excited!  She then texted me post-transfer.  They had to thaw all 7 embryos.  UGH.  We tried to be positive and excited – but you can tell we’re both deflated.

I will cheer my friend on through this 2WW and will remain positive for her.  If her FET works, I will cry tears of joy with her.  If her FET fails, I will cry tears of sorrow with her.

In light of recent happenings in ALI-land, the activities of my day remind me that you don’t need a whole slew of people behind you.  You need a few good friends to get you through.  Sure it’s nice to have the cheers and excitement of those around the world who have walked in your shoes.  But those near and dear to you – the trusted friends who have been through it themselves and share many of the same thoughts as you – those are the people you  need.

I am lucky to have found a new bloggie friend prior to the implosion of the ALI community.  I will support her as she cycles for #2, and I think she will support me.  I have two close friends in town who have both done IVF and we are as “thick as thieves.”  I have my community – it may be small – but we are a true community who support each other no matter what.

 

 


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Random Updates

My “always happy” baby had a rough day.  We think M is teething again – he is just miserable.  I started a new fitness program today and was so excited to take him back to his old daycare for an hour while I worked out.  M is very social and LOVED daycare while he was there, and I was excited for him to see his old friends and have some fun interaction.  He was crying when I picked him up and that hurt my heart. We spent the day snuggling in the rocker, and strolling around the mall.

“Please get me some Advil!”

In other news, we now have a baby gate installed at the top of the stairs.  RELIEF!  We need to leave it open for the kitties to use their restroom downstairs, but we’ll close it when M is cruising around up here on the main floor.  Everyone (but the kitties) is happy about this.

I got the speaker for my jogging stroller just in time for our big stroller debut tomorrow!  Everything is all setup and ready to go – I just need to pump up the tires and we’re good to go!  I’ve got my MP3 player charging as I type so that we don’t run out of tunes tomorrow.

I bought M’s swimsuit today!  It was on sale so I bought the whole ensemble (trunks, top, hat, sandals).  It is very cute!  I am thinking of taking him swimming at the YMCA tomorrow afternoon.  We are signing up for “water babies” swimming lessons that start at the end of the month, so I want him to be comfortable with the pool before we start that.

I sort of made dinner tonight!  I bought a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store that was too dry (sorry, B!) and made fresh asparagus to go with it.  B decided we needed dessert so got out a leftover cupcake from our trip to Omaha yesterday.  It was divine!  M had stew, peas, and pears.  Oh – and Advil!


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8 Months Old – And the Nursery is Finally Done?!

M’s nursery was a labor of love involving a lot of people.  My mom made his bedding set and window treatments; my sister made his name sign; my mother-in-law bulked up his woodland stuffed animal collection; B insisted that I have a rocker; and many artists on Etsy did prints, decals, and the mobile for his room.  We did not want to go with a commercial theme or anything popular, and we wanted it to be gender neutral so that every child would use the same nursery.  It all started with a quilt and growth chart from Red Envelope that centered around woodland animals that I’d bought a year or so before we even started trying to get pregnant.  The finishing touches were the newborn photos taken by White Linen Photography.  We’ve had the photos framed for a long time, but they’ve moved from space to space until we could get them properly hung.

I’m so happy with how it all turned out!

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Welcome Back, My Friend!

I registered for a half marathon in Duluth (the much-loved “Grandma’s Marathon”) and found out today that I didn’t get in.  They run it as a random lottery and there were 8,200 registrants for 6,300 spots.  I’m disappointed.  I ran this half two years ago in 2010 when we were between cycles.  It was my sanity during such a crazy time – running was the one thing in my life that I had control over.  I didn’t run while we were cycling because – well – I don’t really know.  I know there was my unfounded concern about my ovaries getting all twisted up because they were the size of grapefruits (because I was quite the little hen) and quite honestly – I think I was just plain depressed.  No – I know I was just plain depressed.  But the bottom line is that when I did run, those runs were the happiest moments of my days, weeks, and months.  Running the half at Grandma’s gave me something to focus on (besides getting pregnant) – something to train for – SOMETHING TO CONTROL – and it made me HAPPY.

This year, I clearly do not have control over getting into the best half marathon in the Midwest.  This pains me just a little  😉

This all reminds me of the most important thing I learned from our IF struggle.  I am a control freak (no – I did not learn that while dealing with IF.  I already knew that!).  I.must.control.EVERYTHING.  I very vividly remember our wonderful RE talking to us from behind his desk, saying, “Courtney, I get the feeling that you need to be in control.  You’re not in control here.”  Whoa!  I knew he was right, but I was a little thrown off by this.  No one had ever said that to me before about something so important, or at least that I could remember.  And honestly, when he said that, I thought to myself, “well, I’m going to control what I can.”

I need a plan for everything.  I need a road-map.  I kept asking our RE, “but what if this cycle doesn’t work – what then?  I need to know what the plan is.”  He was very obliging to my craziness and did work out a very, very detailed plan for us and made promises I held him to after our FET cycle didn’t work (and thank goodness I did because that plan then led to our baby boy!).  Nothing we hoped would work worked – and this is hard for a controlling person to accept.  If I put my mind to something, and I KNOW I can do it, then I succeed.  It’s that simple.  I don’t put my mind to things I know I can’t be successful at because I think that’s a waste of my time.  Well – I thought I would be successful at getting pregnant – so I put my mind to it.  And I failed.  Time and time again – I failed.

All of those failures made me a better person – a less controlling person.  I learned very quickly to accept the fact that I can’t control everything in my life, no matter how hard I try.  I apply this to my everyday life, and this is a huge development (improvement) for me.  I went from pretty much controlling everything I possibly could, to not even having a desire to control the types of things I used to crave control of.

So today when I got rejected by Grandma’s, I let it roll off my back.  I mean – I did know there was a chance I wouldn’t get in and that it would have nothing to do with how hard I tried.  I didn’t even pre-book a hotel room like I did back in 2010 because I figured I probably wouldn’t get in since I’d been successful (lucky) already once before.  The odds, like IVF, were in my favor, but not strongly in my favor.  I accepted that and just hoped and waited.  I even found another half marathon in MSP to run just in case I didn’t get into Grandma’s.  I had a backup plan because I knew I had no control over my primary plan.  This type of behavior would not have occurred prior to my IF struggle.

Today, I registered for the MSP half marathon and I’m really excited about it!  It won’t be Grandma’s, but it will be fun and who knows, it may be better!  The one problem is that it’s two weeks before Grandma’s, so I’m already behind on my training.  I have some work to do – and it starts tomorrow.

Ahhhhh…. good old control…. welcome back, my friend!  Please keep your distance unless it has to do with my running schedule!